Phantasy Star Online Episode I & II
- October 29, 2002 17:03 PM PST
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Nintendo, meet the broadband adapter. Broadband adapter, Nintendo. Forget George Lucas?this will be the Episode II worth remembering.
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The basic gameplay is completely unchanged. Choosing from 12 (formerly nine) character classes, you must explore the dark underside of the planet Ragol, either by yourself or online with a zillion other GameCube owners. Some people have ragged on PSO for its repetitive dungeons?and, while we're at it, fighting doesn't require much more than good depth perception and a fair sense of rhythm, either. But the point of the game was never breathtaking level design or deep character development?it was to have fun blowing away tons of enemies, discovering new weapons, raising Mags, and showing off like a madman online. (Oh, dear, I think I've just described a PC MMORPG. Am I shifting over to the Dark Side?)
If you don't have the cash for a GameCube network adapter, you can play with up to three other people offline in the split-screen mode, one of the new features in the GC version. This mode works about as you'd expect?the screen is divided into quarters and your map's displayed in the center (it obstructs the game screens but can be switched off). There is some slowdown evident in this mode, especially during giant melees with hordes of monsters, but that's to be expected with all the polygon-pushing Sega is forcing the Cube to do in four-player mode. A less obvious but slightly more annoying quirk: when someone dies and presses A to leave the game, all other players are taken back to town with him. As a result, if your HP hits zero and you don't notice in time, it's very easy to abort the entire quest with one button if you're not careful. Still, the multiplayer mode does it job commendably well, and hey?if it's all you got, it's all you got.
To say that Sonic Team has added a lot of new stuff to PSO would be the understatement of the century. For starters, there's "Episode II," which (in case you didn't know) is a completely new story that's actually bigger than the entire Dreamcast game. Set not long after the end of Episode I, your home base in part two is a secret lab on Pioneer 2, the existence of which was hinted at in the original game. The first two fields are hugely expanded versions of the new maps in PSO Version 2 on the Dreamcast; the rest?from beaches to swamps and even stranger locales?is all original and looking very, very lovely. They're also hard, hard, hard: I personally wouldn't recommend tackling Episode II until your character's at least level 15 or so. Otherwise it won't even be a contest. CPU 1, you 0. That sort of thing.
The graphics have taken a noticeable step up everywhere?Sonic Team has obviously been studying the GameCube programming manuals very hard. There's still the occasional clipping problem (not to mention the seams you can see if you position yourself just right in certain places), but the environments look fantastic and it's rare not to see some kind of bad-arse weather or lighting effect as you progress. There are loads of new items to find, of course, and the difficulty's been thoroughly readjusted, making game progression much smoother. One neat feature worth mentioning: in the Dreamcast PSO, rare weapons like the Sonic Knuckle looked just like regular weapons when your character was holding them. Now they all have unique appearances. Cute.
PSO may not have changed that much for its GameCube debut, but it's still every bit the online addiction it always was. Sonic Team may never make another "real" Phantasy Star, but with games like these, who cares?
